The Best Music Promotion Platforms Every Musician Needs to Use

Are you ready to market your music online, but don’t know where to start?

Marketing is all about reaching the right people at the right time with the right message (in this case – music). To do this, you use various marketing platforms, including:

Social media

Email

Video

Blogs

Paid advertising

And plenty of others

But, you don’t need to use every option available. In fact, it’s better to focus on one or two areas at a time. To help you get started, this article covers the best marketing platforms for music promotion.

Choose a couple of these platforms to use with your overall marketing strategy. Once you master one marketing method, move on to another.

Now, review all 5 of the best platforms…

#1 – Facebook and Instagram

Facebook has over a billion users. It’s hard to ignore such a popular platform, which means Facebook needs to be part of your music promotion strategy.

One often-overlooked Facebook feature is Facebook Events. For each upcoming gig, you should create a Facebook Event. Not only does this act as a reminder for your hardcore fans, it can help get the word out.

Your fans can even act as promoters, sharing the Facebook Event with friends and family. It’s a simple way to promote your music and only takes a few minutes to setup.

Facebook and Instagram open the option for two different marketing strategies – social media marketing and paid social media ad campaigns.

Social media marketing refers to a regular posting schedule. By actively posting on Facebook and Instagram, casual fans remain interested.

What should you post? There are three categories of social media posts – promotions, updates, and third-party content.

Promotions are sales posts, such as a post encouraging people to download your latest song. Or, a post promoting new merchandise. Updates are announcements. This includes announcing an upcoming gig.

About one-third of your social media posts should be promotions and updates. The other two-thirds should be third-party content. This refers to shared content that you’ve found online or shared posts from other Facebook and Instagram users.

Including a mixture of posts keeps people interested and keeps your social media presence active – without spamming your casual fans with self-promotional posts.

#2 – YouTube

The next platform to use is YouTube. There are other video streaming sites available, including Vimeo. But, YouTube is one of the most visited websites in the world. And, one of the largest search engines.

An interesting fact is that over half of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices – and people on mobile devices prefer video content. This makes YouTube an invaluable marketing platform for musicians.

There are many options for uploading videos to YouTube. You don’t necessarily need a “music video” to create a video. You can add a song to a slideshow. It’s that simple. Or, you could spend the time to create something a little more professional. Here are some tips for making better music videos on your own:

#3 – Music Streaming Sites

Music streaming sites are not only part of your marketing, they should be one of your revenue streams.

While you’ll need to attract thousands of plays before you start seeing any income, it’s important to start building this foundation. This will also help you build a larger fan base.

Here is a list of the top streaming platforms based on pay per stream:

Groove

Apple iTunes

Google Play

Spotify

Tidal

Out of these 5 platforms, Spotify is the easiest to use and to get your music listed. Also, Groove has a small pool of users, which impacts your chances of getting a lot of plays.

#4 – Email Marketing Platforms

Email marketing is another incredibly useful resource for building a fan base and making more money online. It’s the most cost-effective marketing platform and is easier than you may think.

The main advantage of email marketing is that you can easily convert website visitors into casual fans by getting them to subscribe to an email newsletter. This is done with “fan magnets”, which we’ve covered in several of our previous posts.

To manage and organize your mailing list, you should use an email marketing platform, such as MailChimp.

You can get started for free, but the total subscribers are limited. Though, it provides an easy to use solution for learning the basics of email marketing without spending any money.

#5 – Music Review Websites

Getting music reviews onto popular music sites can also help increase your exposure. It’s also a great way to build backlinks to your website.

Every artist needs a website to act as their online “home base”. Regardless of their preferred social media site, everyone can visit a website. It’s a solid rock in the ever-changing social media landscape.

To keep your website appearing in search engine results, you need regular traffic and backlinks. Getting people to review your music on other sites will help with both.

Music review websites can include professional industry blogs and individual music bloggers. A website with a larger audience will bring more exposure and provide more benefits to your SEO, but will also be more difficult to get reviewed.

You can reach out to these sites, sending an introductory email. You might not get a response from every inquiry. But, you’ll eventually start to get a few interested reviewers.